The Skills-Powered Organizations: A conversation with Standard Chartered

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the new Shape of Work, uh, podcast series. I'm Kate Bravery, Mercer's talent advisory leader, and I'm especially excited to be hosting today's session on the skills Powered organization. I'm excited not just because I get to spend half an hour with two trailblazers who are breathing life into what can only be described as a new operating system for talent, but, but because they literally just wrote the book on the subject. A, uh, book I'm pleased to share that's packed with practical examples of how you actually deliver this type of transformation. So welcome Tanuj Kaplastram, chief strategy and people officer at Standard Chartered Bank. Wonderful to have you with us today. And welcome Ravindra Suthasam, senior partner and our, uh, transformation leader here at Mercer. All right, well, let's get going. I have so many questions I want to ask you both on. And so in the interest of time, I'm going to get started and Ravind may, maybe I can come to you. First of all, skills based organizations, skills based talent practices pay for skills upskilling, reskilling, talent marketing. All these terms, I think, have been around for quite a while now, and they're certainly gaining momentum in the HR lexicon. So tell me, what's materially different about the skills powered organization and how do you see that really addressing some of the challenges we hear from our clients today?

Speaker B: Yeah, Kate, lovely to be here with you and Tanjiro. Um, so I'll respond to the question and also give you a sense of why Tanuj and I wrote the book. So, yes, certainly lots of interest in skills for the last number of years. Um, but what we've seen is a lot of playing at the margins. Right? Let's find a way of tweaking how we do talent acquisition. Let's find a way of paying skill premiums when we can't find people, et cetera. And the reason we wrote the book is because we strongly feel that there is a massive missed opportunity. Because where we've seen organizations do this, well, Standard Chartered included, it has been because of a systemic view in making skills the currency for work. So less of the towing at the margins and doing the triage at the margins when we have a small, uh, problem and trying to triage that versus a more holistic rethink of work and the human experience of work. And so when I talk about, uh, the skills powered organization, um, you know, it's an organization that is built to reinvent, one that is able to more seamlessly respond to the dramatic changes in work that we're seeing because it has gone from that traditional legacy model of where the building blocks are, these large building blocks of jobs, um, to the micro building blocks of skills and tasks, um, the ability to go from that one to one relationship between a degree, a person and a position, to the many to many between skills and work and the countless nano and micro upskilling and reskilling opportunities that we can deploy at scale and speed to close those skill gaps. And we truly believe that you need these smaller building blocks because they're the ones that are going to allow you to be much more agile in pivoting the work and the workforce at that scale and speed. And the reason we wrote the book was twofold, right? One was to articulate this vision, um, show business leaders and HR leaders what a skill, a true skills powered organization could look like and how they might get there. But most importantly, not just make this a theoretical exercise. And I think that's been for me the great privilege of partnering with Tonnage is writing a book that is truly practical in nature. How do you bring leaders along? How do you start this journey? How do you trigger it? How do you sustain it? What's the role of technology versus the other enablers? I think that's where this book has, I believe in. You'd expect me to say it, uh, broken new ground because it is the combination of theory and world class practice.

Speaker A: M. Well, I know the comments that you made there about playing on the margins will definitely resonate with our listeners. It's something that's come up time and time again. We're just not making the big strides that we need to. And I think agility is such a big topic. We'll touch on that later. Um, but Tunis, ah, you are in the chair where you can actually turn the theory into action. And so I'm curious, you've had a very ambitious transformation. Journ Standard chartered. And I want to know what's propelled you forward. I'm also curious about the fact that you now have two different vantage points to be seeing that from the Chief Strategy Officer and the Chief People Officer role. And so I'm just curious of sort of what the interplay there is between strategy and talent initiatives and how pivotal that was in delivering some of the transformation that you've been on.

Speaker C: Thank you, Kate. First, thanks for inviting me. And you, uh, know, Robin knows this. It's uh, a, it's a real delight doing this, uh, with him. I mean, just a couple of points, uh, I will make. So, um, in the book we Talk about this and in all the conversations we have done, we've spoken about this a lot. To say this pivot to becoming much more skills powered needs to be deeply rooted in the strategy of business and the commercial imperative that one is trying to drive. And I think, I believe that one of the reasons this agenda has we've kind of skirted around the edges is because we have not fundamentally asked ourselves the question on the big commercial opportunities and the big transformation agenda. For us in Stanchart, the pivot to becoming much more skills powered was deeply rooted in the commercial implications of the build, buy borrow talent opportunities that we needed to propel our growth agenda. So that's where it started when I was in the chief people officer role before I took on the expanded portfolio. Now m my current role I look after corporate strategy. Our strategy is very clear. We are an international cross border bank for international corporates and high net worth affluent clients. That's what we are. Uh, so I bring together the corporate strategy mandate with the bank wide transformation agenda and the levers that help us accelerate the delivery of our strategy. And that's quite important because when you look at the levers that help us accelerate the delivery of our strategy, people is a very big part of it. But in my portfolio I also have our strategic partnerships, our vendor management, supply chain management. And we are talking about that in the context of the skills and capabilities which we need to borrow from the ecosystem to be able to deliver on the agenda. So actually uh, I believe that the portfolio has really helped accelerate this conversation around how do we transform our business to deliver on this ambitious growth agenda and how a huge part of that transformation is deconstructing how work gets done and making skills a uh, currency of work as compared to traditional jobs. And when I talk about sort of skills and, and that's the whole people piece of the transformation. It's both the systemic skills that are needed to transform in the world that we are in and more job specific skills to deliver on our uh, cross border international corporates and affluent strategy. Uh, but it fits within that overall imperative of how do we transform our business to accelerate our growth agenda. Our growth strategy.

Speaker A: Mhm. You so eloquently talk about this kind of new language that we have in hr, deconstructing how work gets done. You know, skills being the currency of work. And I hear you on kind of linking it to the commercial strategy, but how did you get the rest of your organization sort of bought into this new imperative? Because from what I'm hearing from you And Ravin, this has to be a central part of the strategy and there's some heavy lifting there if you're gonna have those smaller building blocks that sound like they're pivotal to driving the transformation.

Speaker C: And I'll just do a very quick one, but then I will pass on to Ravindra because Robin talks about it in the book and in life and our many conversations about the framework in jobs. Look, um, one of the things we've spoken quite a bit about, you got to know, go narrow and shallow. This is one of Raman's very early, uh, comments to me, which I use, uh, a lot. And when we started our journey to becoming skills powered, we started with the construct of jobs. I always say this because it's a language our leaders understood and you got to translate this, uh, in a language that businesses understand and in our case, in a language that bankers understand. So our journey started with us talking about jobs, but actually doing traditional strategic workforce plan type of work, but thinking about jobs that are going to go away and new jobs that are going to come, um, overlaying that with skills. So, you know, we started developing a really good heat map of the jobs that are going to go away, kind of translate to a certain set of skills and the new skills we will need, and then actually putting a dollar number on what it would take us to reskill and redeploy as opposed to hiring externally. And I think that conversation was a really important conversation because, you know, it wasn't just about, you know, training people at scale. By the way, don't get me wrong, you know, building a learning habit and learning agenda is a critical part of it. But it was really important that we talk about pivot to scale, not just in the context of, um, large scale learning intervention, but actually in the context of what is the commercial value behind the build by borrow choices that we will need to make in our business to deliver on our mega growth aspirations. And I always say that we are a growth bank. We are in some of the fastest growing emerging markets in the world. Our story is a growth story. So to me, um, and then once we establish that, we started off with five proof of concepts and I talk about it a lot, and not all proof of concepts were successful, but it was important to have proof of concepts where you spoke about reskilling from sunset to sunrise jobs and actually showing data around time to get productive and speed to market. And I think that's where our journey began and we kind of built it up from there. But Rabin, I know you've got a very useful framework which guides our conversations in this space.

Speaker A: Ravin, do you wanna maybe share a bit about that? And M. Tunaj, thank you so much for giving that one click down. I think that really gives some tangibility around how you delivered those use cases and how you met your stakeholders, where they were in the language they were familiar with. Robin, anything else you want to add to that?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, Tana just said something that's really important. Kate, that goes back to your original question, right? That uh, skills are not new. Um, we've been toying at the margins with um, skill based talent practices, talent acquisition, paying for skills, you know, introducing new technology. But where challenge started is really important. And I, and it's where I worry many HR functions kind of lose their way because Tanaj and her team started with a really clear North Star that was grounded in the economics of the business. There was a very clear outcome and output that made it worth the while of the leaders and the organization to transform. And so often Kate, as you know, in the work we do with clients, um, organizations start off with things like, oh, we've got to make careers better. Yes, yes we do. But in service of what? And I think making sure that it's always in service of the economics of the business I think are really important because when times get bad, when times get challenging, the first things that business leaders look at are uh, those things that are not going to make a material difference. And we've seen so many organizations, particularly in the time we're in now, with organizations struggling for any semblance of a solid footing in an economy that seems to be shifting really quickly, the things that get taken off the table are a lot of HR initiatives where the business case and the clear link to are we improving profitability, productivity, agility, efficiency. Can we quantify it? What's the ROI on this? Those are the things that are top of the list and um, uh, top of the, you know, prime, uh, for the chopping block.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the reven. As you know, we just released our um, recent 20, uh, 25 executive outlook study. What was it? Eight out of ten executives said that they need greater agility in their talent processes to pivot their workforce towards changing business priorities or they just won't survive. That's staggering to see. And I think that speaks to people having a real worry that the disconnect between strategy and execution is very prevalent. And the fact that they can't pivot their workforce if business fundamentals change and they need to shift, you And I have chatted on this headline quite a lot. I think the drive for greater productivity, the drive for greater agility is definitely ringing in our ears. If I'm sitting in the HR chair and I need to make the case that by adopting more skills powered approaches, I can deliver on some of those asks of the business. How would you coach them to have that conversation?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it really involves. I love the fact that tonnage's journey started with one number, right? This, this number, that. Here's how much we can save by upskill, by reskilling talent from the sunset to the sunrise roles. And I think in similar fashion, when organizations talk about, um, needing to drive greater agility, it's about repurposing the talent we have, having much better demand signals for how work is changing, translating that into the skills being demanded, having a clear sense of the supply of skills, and being able to direct learning and other interventions to close that supply demand gap at scale and speed. Because when you can do that, you can actually, you do a couple of things right. You show quite clearly how the asset base that you've invested in for decades, your talent can be re pivoted and reskilled for the new work that's coming and thus deployed, um, rapidly. And more importantly, I think what you're able to do is put that in very clear economic terms, like Tanuj did. Um, but also you build a, the very act of doing that builds the resilient organization, the one that is built to keep reinventing as the world changes. And I do think the times we're in now, which, Kate, as you know, this premium on agility is because of the uncertainty in the world we live in, the inability to plan for long cycles. And that's where, you know, a job is great because it's, it's built for predictability and stability. It's built for an era where we can plan. But skills become even more important because once we have insight into those skills, we get to understand how can they be redeployed, how can, how do they need to be transformed to stay relevant? And I think those smaller building blocks are what's pivotal for enabling us to have businesses that are not just built to survive, but frankly thrive in an uncertain, volatile, uh, environment.

Speaker A: One of the phrases, Ravin, I have shamelessly stolen from you over the years is we're living through an era of perpetual reinvention. And honestly, it's more true this year than I think it was last year. So, um, thank you for that. I love the dialogue that is more around, um, workforce economics, uh, as opposed to the traditional language of L and D. And I think that's a really important pivotal look. We've talked a lot about the business rationale and the case for thinking about your talent strategies through a different lens. Maybe I want to flip now to the employee piece. One of the big themes in your book is about empowering employees to actually take charge of their own skills development, have their own skills passmont. That's a big theme. Tanaj. I've heard you mention that time and time again. You've shared, look, if we don't have engaged employees, they're not going to want to contribute positively. If we don't have engaged employees, they're not going to drive our innovation. So I'm curious, how did you engage your workforce to come on this pretty monumental journey at Standard Chartered? And for those listening, is there any tips on how do we create that learning culture that's receptive to this magnitude of change?

Speaker C: Yeah. No, Kate, it's a great question. And look, I'm a massive believer in two things. Employee advocacy being a real, um, a force for good. I believe. We talk about various, uh, stakeholder groups. You know, we talk about investors, shareholders, you know, customers, in our case regulators. Uh, we don't talk about employee and employee advocacy as something that can drive a huge amount of change both inside the company and actually in the world. So I'm a big believer in the power of employee advocacy. A few things I will say we were very clear with our colleagues, uh, very early on in our transformation journey is that as we invest in greater levels of automation, and this is much before AI, but now the conversations have moved to AI Gen AI, um, the composition of our workforce will change, the size and shape of our organization will change. And uh, that is not something that we can avoid. So we've been very candid and actually in our conversations led by our CEO, our cfo, members of the management team, me, we speak quite a bit about, uh, the concept of employability versus employment. This idea that traditional organizations had a very paternalistic approach to generating or guaranteeing employment. And we talk a lot about, uh, striving for employability. All of us are working towards employability and not just traditional employment. And it's not just a play on words. It's a very different, uh, two way contract with employees. It's being very open and honest on how with technology, emerging technologies, workforces will change and disrupt. And what is the investment the firm will do, uh, in getting our colleagues employable? Uh, um, you Know, hopefully for within Stanchard, but if not within Stanchard, then with other companies. And that's something that we are sort of striving for. So I think to me upfront having that conversation, I think building a strong culture of learning is critical and for that role modeling is absolutely critical. One of the first things we did many, many years ago is we do this global Learning Week. Robin has been one of our guests and quite a few of our learning weeks. Robin, thank you for that. But you know, we do a week where everyone in the firm learns together. Uh, it starts with the chairman, CEO. Everyone sets out the time. We do a lot of, we choose three or four areas around our future skills academy. So I talk quite a bit about skill building is not just role based but systemic skill building that we need to do both around technical and human skills. And our global learning week is structured around these future skills. Everyone we've got chairman, members of our board, we call in strategic partners, we call industry leaders, but we also do a lot of team based learning. So you know, we do brain training games, you know, simulations together. We do, my favorite is we do a debate. You know, we pick up topics where we have bankers and last time we got students, young debaters from universities to come and debate. So this idea of social learning, team based learning, engaging in those topics and actually celebrating that. And then of course we have done loads of targeted reskilling to redeployment work. And for me some of the stats are amazing. We've got on average 30 to 35,000 colleagues who are actively engaged with our future skills Academy. So this is digital data. Uh, Genai, uh, we've got an AI learning hub. So future skills academy. And if you look at um, the work we have done, on average reskilling to redeployment is US$50,000 per person. For us it's a pretty big number that we are talking in terms of cost avoidance. But we are also now able to correlate the colleagues who are investing in their skill development, especially on future skills academies have a greater probability of getting redeployed into the sunrise jobs that are coming up. And we make a big deal about it, we talk about it, but we also recognize that there are some colleagues who are not interested. We've got a percentage of our colleagues who are not interested in, in reskilling. You know, they are very comfortable doing what they are doing and they recognize that there is a shelf life and that's fine as well. But so, so to me, I think having These very open conversations and honest conversations, but then creating an infrastructure where people can engage with these programs, Leveraging technology for doing that, I think is massively critical.

Speaker A: Yeah, and the science backs it up, I think year over year. One of the things we see in global talent trends is the people that report that they're most thriving are in the organizations where they're being searingly honest about how a AI will disrupt their job and what will be the impact on that. Um, so I do think, you know, there's a. There's a real case for not just empowering individuals, but also making sure that they know the realities of work. And I, I forget you're such a. Such a vocal person on the employee advocacy thing. So thank you so much for sharing that. I am looking at the clock here, and I'm not going to get through all the questions I want to talk with you today. Um, you know, Ravin, I think one of the things that's absolutely gonna be top of as. Look, if I've been inspired by this conversation today, if I bought the book, how do I get started? You know, if you could maybe pull out three actionable steps that people could take tomorrow to get them on this journey, what would you recommend?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, Kate, I'll share two things with you. One is, when Tanish and I wrote the book, there were three things that came out as the core capabilities of that skills powered organization. And then I, uh, will respond to your question about three things that we saw that were sort of critical to getting started on the journey. So the three core capabilities. The first was what we notionally termed work design. This clear understanding of the changing demand signals for work, what that meant for skills, an understanding of the supply of skills, and how that demand and supply would come together in light of emerging capabilities from AI gen, AI agentic, AI, et cetera. So understanding where might these technologies substitute versus augment, versus create demand for new skills. So this work design was one capability. With that understanding of demand and supply, how do we make development part of the strategic plan of the organization? Just as Tanu just talked about, not just development as learning and development as we used to do it in the past, but clearly focused development where we are upskilling and reskilling people at scale and at speed to close those gaps. And then thirdly, making deployment a core capability of the organization as well, how do we ensure that we are rapidly and again at scale and speed, deploying the skills that we've developed back to productive work to drive agility, productivity, efficiency? So three core Capabilities. And then in terms of getting started on the journey, we identified three things that were important. The first is having a North Star that anchors the journey for an extended period of time, clearly grounded in the economics of the business and what the ROI would be. Secondly, Tanu just mentioned starting narrow and shallow. How do we go deep in specific areas where there is a business imperative to change, where the business is changing quickly, where we have bottlenecks in the process, so a business focused lens. And then secondly, starting shallow. Can we take a particular talent or human capital process and completely retool it end to end to see what a skills powered solution might look like? M. Very often organizations start with internal deployment or talent acquisition because those are the, uh, typical pain points. And then lastly, ensuring that as we go on this journey of prototyping and experimenting that we are not just throwing technology at the problem. We articulate eight key enablers that are essential for a successful series of pilots that then will drive generation of the ROI that we talked about with that North Star. So, three steps for getting started.

Speaker A: Wonderful. Thank you, Ravin. And I'm assuming we can read more about that in your book. But Ravin, I think what you've given us, some real general principles that we all need to kind of think about before we embark on this journey, uh, based on a lot of work that you do, Tanish, maybe I can ask the same question for you. You, you've been living and breathing this over the last couple of years. Um, you know, if someone was right at the beginning of the journey, what might be, you know, a tip or advice that you'd give them? But I'm also curious, as you embark on the next chapter where you become more mature on being a skills powered organization, what do you foresee as you know, the next obstacles to overcome?

Speaker C: Look, I mean, uh, unsurprisingly, my tips are very, very similar to Robin. It's just that our language is slightly different. The first thing is I always. To drive transformation at scale, you need to focus on the why of the transformation, not just what and how. And I think very to my mind, a lot of transformations fail because we talk a lot about what needs to be done and how will we do it, as opposed to why we are doing it. And I think it's the same for skills and for us, the why was rooted in the real commercial case of our business. But I think the why is really important. I'm a big one for progress over perfection, you know, in life and definitely with this work. Right. I mean, you know, if you go back to where our agenda started. It was baby steps, but very clearly real focus on data storytelling, coming back to why we are doing it and linking everything back. But it was progress over perfection. And that to me is really important. We spoke about employee advocacy. It's important to take colleagues with you, but it's very important to take your people leaders with you. And I think co creating with people leaders. I mean Kate, you, me, Ravin, have been in the world of sort of talent management for years. Talent orders, talent sharers. We've said all of this for how many years now. I think in our journey we engaged a lot with people leaders. Every month I do a people leader call where we talk about a lot of stuff in our transformation, but a lot about skills. And the why to people leaders is very important as well. Right. And I think how do you bring them along with their journey and actually not just bring them along. How do you co create the future with your people leaders? And the last one for me is the power of technology. I'm a firm believer that while tech is a challenge in a lot of ways, I think tech is a massive opportunity to reinvent people management and being able to democratize access which we have done with our uh, marketplace. Be able to hyper personalize experiences but be able to get data at scale which helps you target your interventions in the right direction. So you know, make uh, tech your friend. And I think it's really important to leverage the power of technology. I think those would be uh, some of my things. Where does this go next? You know, I think there is uh, in the book we talk a lot about the beauty of organizations of today, that you've got three models of work at the same time that exist. You know, you've got the fixed model of work and then you've got fully flexed and there's something in between. And I think we are really, I mean our workforce transformation agenda is really focused now on how do we. I used to always talk about build buy borrow skills. I now talk a lot about build buy borrow bot. So how do we ensure that we are leveraging the power of AI Genai to deconstruct work in a way that it does not just become technology slapped on top of our processes. And you know, we had just this morning spoke about getting our global process owners for 100 biggest processes together. And the conversation is build by borrow bot, all keeping skills at the back of it. So we are trying to get the conversation down to people who run and own some of our biggest processes and thinking about how technology plays with human, uh, which comes back to the walk redesign point.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I love how you're empowering people to own the end to end process and to bring about the change themselves. I really enjoyed asking you both the same question because you do use a different language and I think, uh, the language, um, will resonate with different listeners. Um, you've also done a wonderful job of summarizing the key points in your book. So I'm not going to do a summary, but. But what I might do is, Ravin, if, since I've got you on the pod, I might ask just a slightly different question. You know, Ravin, it's really exciting to hear what Tanuj is talking about because it reminds me a lot of some of the stuff you talk about in your prior book, Work Without Jobs, and it really is coming into effect now. You were just a little before your time. Uh, so that's exciting. But, you know, as a futurist, I'm interested. Where do you see talent practices evolving in the next three years? You know, if we were getting together three years from now, what's going to be the topic of conversation then?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, Kida, I, uh, think everything that we've talked about, the progress that we've made around becoming skills powered, the external conditions that are going to, in my mind, you know, further accelerate the transformation that Tanner just talked about. I think we're going to see a number of things happen. One is this imperative to keep decoupling growth from resource intensity, I think is only going to accelerate in the world we're in. And what that's going to do is drive that shift Tanish Talked about from 100% of work being bound up in fixed full time jobs with all of the frictional cost associated with it, towards more flex and flow models of work. I, um, think is absolutely the direction we're going to see organizations go. We've already seen that. I think we're going to see more and more organizations and business leaders open the aperture of work to understand how do I build an organization that is, that is invented, if you will, to keep combining and recombining, changing machine capabilities with talent that is organized in a variety of different ways. You know, I'm not saying the job is dead, uh, but I think there's going to be a lot more options for connecting people to work beyond the job. And I think it's going to cause us to be more discerning about where the job makes sense versus flexible or flow models. I think the other thing that we're going to see is if, if you know, if these changes come to bear this core capability of work design, where HR and business leaders come together with the capacity to keep reinventing work is going to be absolutely pivotal because I think as we all know, you can no longer separate, run the business from, transform the business. Every leader needs to be thinking about how she's going to keep transforming for what comes next while keeping the lights on for what's happening today.

Speaker C: Yeah, mhm.

Speaker A: Well I think on that note we'll see a lot more of these combined roles with talent and transformation or strategy and uh, people leadership. I think they sit hand in hand. We are over time so I am going to close it there. And thank you Ravid and Tunis with just an invigorating session. Um, certainly got me thinking about what's possible today and how exciting tomorrow will be. I do know that from the data we have about what the next generation want out of the world of work, you paint a uh, future that I think will be more appealing than the world of work is today. Ravin, if we want to learn more about the skills powered organization, where can we purchase the book?

Speaker B: Yeah, so uh, Tanij and I have a website for the book, uh, where people can download an excerpt and they can purchase the book from the usual sources, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, et cetera. And the website for the book is www.skillspoweredorganization.com.

Speaker A: yeah and also I know that we do quite a lot of work in this area so there's more also on the Mercer uh.com website. So please do check that out as well. And to that point, if you want to hear some more inspiring stories about how companies are translating trends into tangible talent and reward strategies, do check some of the other interviews in this series. Um, thank you both again for joining us today. Really rich discussion and everyone thank you for tuning in. Hope you have a great rest of day.

Speaker C: Thanks Kate. Thanks Robin.

Speaker B: Thanks Kate. Thanks Danuji.

Speaker A: Sam. Mhm.